440
eighteenth-century ossified hierarchies: Rousseau in his famed declaration that
“man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains,” and Bougeant expressing the
same insight with respect to all other species.
His most pressing observations are those concerning the language of our animistic kin; and in this way he was nearly two centuries ahead of the revolution in zoosemiotics and deep ethology to come. Bougeant writes, “When the Hen obliged to
keep her young warm under her has not Time to go abroad, and the Cock drops
some Food out of his Beak into hers, she testifies her Satisfaction to him by the clapping of Wings, and by a little Cry different from all the others, which must necessarily signify, ‘I am very glad: You do me Pleasure’”.
2
And Bougeant applies such
field observations in his analysis of psycholinguistic conductivity between insects,
spiders, and every major representative of the animal worlds, with especial focus on
avifauna. He writes, “Two Sparrows will know one another by their Voice among a
thousand. I might here allege a hundred like Facts, to prove that all Animals have, in
their mutual Correspondence a Delicacy of Discernment, which is not within our
reach, and which makes them observe Differences among themselves which are
altogether imperceptible to us. If then many Birds seem to us always to sing the
same Note, as the Sparrow, the Chaffinch, and the Canary-Bird; we must not thence
conclude that they are saying the same thing for ever [sic]”.
3
Such was Bougeant’s influence (by Earth Day 2020, Pope Francis would declare,
“Take to the streets to teach us what is obvious….there will be no future for us if we
destroy the environment…”) that just 3 years later John Hildrop (1682–1756), best
known perhaps for his work Reflections on Reason (1722), came to greatest prominence by composing the first book on the subject of animal rights by an English
author: Free Thoughts Upon the Brute-Creation; Or an Examination of Father
Bougeant’s Philosophical Amusement, &C: In Two Letters to A Lady.
4
The famed
frontispiece was engraved by Gerard Vandergucht (1696–1776), of Adam and Eve
surrounded by their cliff-showering waterfall, of a paradise teeming with birds and
mammals. One of the birds, no doubt an ostrich (which had been painted for many
centuries before Hildrop, including Raphael’s famous image of one),
5
in fact is so
uncannily a giant Moa in every other respect that one is forced to re-examine the
evidence, which to date suggests that the first knowledge of Moas in Europe did not
occur until the 1830s, the first discovery of dinosaurs, by British fossil enthusiast
William Buckland, in 1824. If Vandergucht had heard about Moas we don’t how,
unless explorers returning with loot to Amsterdam had somehow inflated—nearer to
young brontosaurus proportions—an ostrich.
2 Ibid., p. 62.
3 ibid., p. 50.
4 Printed for R. Minors, London, 1742.
5 See “The Ostrich: An unexpected Allegory,” by Melinda Knox, Queens University, Kingston
Ontario, Canada, n.d., https://www.queensu.ca/vpr/ostrich-unexpected-allegory, Accessed May 5,
2020. See also, Raphael’s Ostrich, by Una Roman D’Elia, Penn State University Press, University
Park, PA, 2015.
48 The Mind of a Chicken
eighteenth-century ossified hierarchies: Rousseau in his famed declaration that
“man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains,” and Bougeant expressing the
same insight with respect to all other species.
His most pressing observations are those concerning the language of our animistic kin; and in this way he was nearly two centuries ahead of the revolution in zoosemiotics and deep ethology to come. Bougeant writes, “When the Hen obliged to
keep her young warm under her has not Time to go abroad, and the Cock drops
some Food out of his Beak into hers, she testifies her Satisfaction to him by the clapping of Wings, and by a little Cry different from all the others, which must necessarily signify, ‘I am very glad: You do me Pleasure’”.
2
And Bougeant applies such
field observations in his analysis of psycholinguistic conductivity between insects,
spiders, and every major representative of the animal worlds, with especial focus on
avifauna. He writes, “Two Sparrows will know one another by their Voice among a
thousand. I might here allege a hundred like Facts, to prove that all Animals have, in
their mutual Correspondence a Delicacy of Discernment, which is not within our
reach, and which makes them observe Differences among themselves which are
altogether imperceptible to us. If then many Birds seem to us always to sing the
same Note, as the Sparrow, the Chaffinch, and the Canary-Bird; we must not thence
conclude that they are saying the same thing for ever [sic]”.
3
Such was Bougeant’s influence (by Earth Day 2020, Pope Francis would declare,
“Take to the streets to teach us what is obvious….there will be no future for us if we
destroy the environment…”) that just 3 years later John Hildrop (1682–1756), best
known perhaps for his work Reflections on Reason (1722), came to greatest prominence by composing the first book on the subject of animal rights by an English
author: Free Thoughts Upon the Brute-Creation; Or an Examination of Father
Bougeant’s Philosophical Amusement, &C: In Two Letters to A Lady.
4
The famed
frontispiece was engraved by Gerard Vandergucht (1696–1776), of Adam and Eve
surrounded by their cliff-showering waterfall, of a paradise teeming with birds and
mammals. One of the birds, no doubt an ostrich (which had been painted for many
centuries before Hildrop, including Raphael’s famous image of one),
5
in fact is so
uncannily a giant Moa in every other respect that one is forced to re-examine the
evidence, which to date suggests that the first knowledge of Moas in Europe did not
occur until the 1830s, the first discovery of dinosaurs, by British fossil enthusiast
William Buckland, in 1824. If Vandergucht had heard about Moas we don’t how,
unless explorers returning with loot to Amsterdam had somehow inflated—nearer to
young brontosaurus proportions—an ostrich.
2 Ibid., p. 62.
3 ibid., p. 50.
4 Printed for R. Minors, London, 1742.
5 See “The Ostrich: An unexpected Allegory,” by Melinda Knox, Queens University, Kingston
Ontario, Canada, n.d., https://www.queensu.ca/vpr/ostrich-unexpected-allegory, Accessed May 5,
2020. See also, Raphael’s Ostrich, by Una Roman D’Elia, Penn State University Press, University
Park, PA, 2015.
48 The Mind of a Chicken